Machines for spreading out and loading flat clothing articles comprising a frame supporting a conveyor belt and several loading stations served by respective operators in a semiautomatic loading mode are known in the prior art. Each loading station comprises a pair of loading clamps in which the corresponding operator secures two contiguous corners of a large flat clothing article, for example a sheet or a tablecloth. These loading clamps are moved from a loading position where the large flat clothing article has been loaded to a transferring position in which the loading clamps transfer the contiguous corners of the flat clothing article to spreading clamps. The spreading clamps are then moved in a direction transverse to the forward direction of the conveyor belt such that they unfold the flat clothing article, position it facing a loading end of the conveyor belt and smoothen it. Deposition means then deposit an upper end of the flat clothing article on the conveyor belt and the movement of the conveyor belt loads the flat clothing article thereon and transfers it to the laundry processing unit.
In another type of prior art machines, each loading station comprises a pair of loading and spreading clamps in which the corresponding operator secures two contiguous corners of the large flat clothing article. These loading and spreading clamps carrying the flat clothing article are then moved in a direction transverse to the forward direction of the conveyor belt such that they unfold the flat clothing article, position it facing a loading end of the conveyor belt and smoothen it. Then, the deposition means deposit the flat clothing article on the conveyor as mentioned above.
Some of these prior art machines further include an alternative manual loading mode by means of which one or more operators can load small flat clothing articles such as napkins, pillowcases, cloths or tablecloths directly on the conveyor belt.
In some of these prior art machines, each of the loading clamps comprises a fixed loading support and a loading jaw driven by an actuator to catch and maintain a part of one of the corners of the flat clothing article against one side of said loading support. One drawback of clamps of this type is the fact that the contiguous corners of the flat clothing article are transferred from the loading clamps to the spreading clamps in conditions which do not assure a correct attachment of the corners in the spreading clamps, and this causes folds and wrinkles in the flat clothing article when the same is subsequently deposited on the conveyor belt by the deposition means.
Document EP-A-1683908 describes an example of one of such machines of the prior art. Other known machines are described in EP-A-0554205 and JP-A-2002326000.
These machines for spreading and loading flat clothing articles of the state of the art have in general one or more of the following drawbacks:                Risk for the operators due to the movements of the clamps which are necessarily fast if wanting to achieve a high productivity.        Productivity relatively limited by the time taken by the conveyor belt to load a flat clothing article, since the spreading clamps cannot spread and position a flat clothing article until the loading end of the conveyor belt is free to receive it and to not hinder the preceding flat clothing article.        Bad quality in depositing the flat clothing articles on the conveyor belt, for example the presence of folds and wrinkles due to the bad conditions in which the deposition is performed in machines of high productivity.        Large sizes of the machine, for example in those cases in which the transferring means are located at a height sufficient to keep certain movable elements away from the operators and thus reducing their risk.        Poor visibility of the small flat clothing articles deposited on the conveyor belt in the manual loading mode due to the concealment caused by protection elements partially removed for accessing the conveyor belt.        